Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak on this motion of condolence on the death of the Hon. Kep Enderby QC. Kep Enderby, as he was known, died on 7 January this year at the age of 88, the closing chapter in a life devoted to the service of his profession, his party, his community and his country. He was a man of principles and ideals—a social reformer committed to human rights, civil liberties and the protection of the weak. He rose to the office of Attorney-General and he held the position for just nine months—the turbulent period at the end of the Whitlam government's time in office. But in that time, Kep Enderby made sweeping social reforms which have stood the test of time. He modernised Australian family law with legislation which included no-fault divorce. He legislated to tackle racial discrimination, to decriminalise homosexuality and to remove the death penalty from the federal statute books.

Kep Enderby was born in 1926 in the town of Dubbo. His parents owned the local milk bar and he attended the local state primary and high schools. He joined the RAAF in 1944 and trained as a pilot during the Second World War. As Senator Abetz has said, he was a top amateur golfer after the war and for a while considered turning professional; but in the end he decided to pursue a career in the law and trained as a barrister in London and Sydney. In the early 1960s he moved to Canberra to take up a position as a law lecturer at the then newly established Australian National University. He said that in those days he was drunk on the words of Karl Marx and the Russian anarcho-communist Pyotr Kropotkin. Well, it was the 1960s, I suppose!

He joined the Australian Labor Party and by 1970 had won preselection for the electorate representing the ACT. In those days there was just one seat for the ACT in the House of Representatives—the seat which he won at a by-election in May 1970. This was an exciting time for Kep Enderby himself but also for the Labor Party. Gough Whitlam was capturing the public imagination and the mood for social and political change was growing. In 1972 Kep became part of the Whitlam government, the first federal Labor government in 23 years. He served as Minister for the Capital Territory, Minister for the Northern Territory, Minister for Supply, Minister for Manufacturing Industry and Minister for Customs and Excise. Then, in February 1975, he became the Attorney-General.

As I mentioned previously, in the nine months from February to November 1975 he secured parliamentary passage of some ground-breaking legal reforms. They included the Family Law Act and the Racial Discrimination Act. He drew on his own experiences as a lawyer to make out the case for no-fault divorce, a major social reform in Australia. As he told the House, all of us who have done this work in the courts know of cases where the inheritance of the children is dissipated because the parties have been encouraged to hate each other to such an extent that they fight on.

In his second reading speech on the Racial Discrimination Act, he cited the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and its assertion that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. He argued that the bill was designed not only to give legal remedies to the victims of discrimination but also to perform a critical educational role in the community. He said, and those words are apposite today:

The proscribing of racial discrimination in legislative form will require legal sanctions. These will also make people more aware of the evils, the undesirable and unsociable consequences of discrimination-the hurtful consequences of discrimination- and make them more obvious and conspicuous.

In addition to these two historic reforms, Kep Enderby was also responsible for decriminalising homosexuality and abortion in the territories. He was always a passionate advocate for Canberra and the ACT. He used his first speech in the House to advocate greater representation in the federal parliament for the people of the ACT and to advocate for self-government.

He lost his seat in the double dissolution election of 1975, which swept Labor from office, yet his reforms have endured—they have not just endured, they have engendered real tangible and progressive social change, and they have made Australia a more just and tolerant country. For that, we owe Kep Enderby a great deal.

In 1982 he was appointed as a Justice of the New South Wales Supreme Court, a position he held for 10 years. In retirement he was involved in the Esperanto movement, believing that a common international language would promote international peace and understanding. His commitment to human rights, civil liberties and social reform remain undented.

People who knew him have described him as a whirlwind of ideas. One of his successors representing the people of Canberra, Mr Leigh, said recently that he was someone who never fluctuated in his principles, who held fast to his views as a social democrat. I extend our deepest sympathies to his family members in their loss.